News & Events

Press Release

BARD GLOBALIZATION AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS PROGRAM FALL SPEAKER SERIES OFFERS FOUR LECTURES IN SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, AND DECEMBER “Democracy in the Middle East and Elsewhere—Is it the Right American Policy?” is topic of lecture on December 2

“The Future of Iraq,” “Inside the Iraqi Resistance,” “American Foreign Policy after the Election,” and “Democracy in the Middle East and Elsewhere—Is it the Right American Policy?” are topics of lectures on September 21, October 13,
November 11, and December 2
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Bard Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) Program fall speaker series will offer four lectures to take place on Tuesday, September 21; Wednesday, October 13; Thursday, November 11; and Thursday, December 2. The series is free and open to the public; each lecture will begin at 6:15 p.m. at Bard Hall, 410 West 58th Street, New York. Reservations are required, as seating is limited. The lectures will be moderated by James Chace, director of the BGIA Program.
On Tuesday, September 21, Max Boot, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, and Mark Danner, Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard, will speak about “The Future of Iraq.” Boot, the Olin Senior Fellow, National Security Studies, of the Council of Foreign Relations, is the former editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, which was described by Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as “a groundbreaking book that separates fact from myth on the use of American military power throughout our nation’s history.” Boot is a noted military historian. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The Weekly Standard, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He is also the author of Out of Order: Arrogance, Corruption, and Incompetence on the Bench. Danner is a staff writer for the New Yorker and professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War. His writing has also appeared in Aperture, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review, and on the New York Times Op-Ed page.
The lecture series continues on Wednesday, October 13, with Molly Bingham and Steve Connors, two freelance photojournalists who were in Iraq for more than a year, speaking about “Inside the Iraqi Resistance.” Bingham, a freelance photographer from Louisville, was imprisoned for seven days in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein just prior to the Iraq war. She was Vice President Al Gore’s documentary photographer for the National Archives. Bingham also has recorded the plight of beleaguered people and places in Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip, Burundi, Sudan, and Iran. She is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Freelance combat photographer Connors has photographed events such as the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia; the continuing war in Sri Lanka; the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide; and the division of Yugoslavia, from the Slovenian declaration of independence through Croatia and Bosnia and more recently Kosovo. During the past six years he has worked in Russia and other former Soviet states. His photographs have appeared in Stern, Newsweek, Time, Der Spiegel, Paris Match, L’Express, Die Zeit, The Guardian, and The Independent.
On Thursday, November 11, Jonathan Schell, peace and disarmament correspondent for The Nation and the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute, will speak about “American Foreign Policy after the Election.” Schell is the author of groundbreaking works, including The Time of Illusion, The Village of Ben Suc, and The Gift of Time. He is a regular contributor to Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation. Schell has taught at Yale, Princeton, and Wesleyan and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Concluding the fall series, on Thursday, December 2, Adrian Karatnycky, counselor and senior scholar at Freedom House, and Omar Encarnación, associate professor of political studies at Bard, will speak about “Democracy in the Middle East and Elsewhere—Is it the Right American Policy?” Karatnycky is the principal analyst for Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties and coeditor of the annual Nations in Transit report on political change in the former Soviet bloc. He is the coauthor of three books Workers’ Rights, East and West; Hidden Nations: The People Challenge the Soviet Union; and New Nations Rising: The Fall of the Soviets and the Challenge of Independence. His articles have been published in Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, and the New York Times. Karatnycky serves as codirector of the Council on Foreign Relations/Freedom Independent Task Force on Strengthening U.S. Leadership at the United Nations. Encarnación is the author of The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil. His articles and reviews have appeared in Comparative Politics, World Policy Journal, South European Society and Politics, Orbis, and Political Science Quarterly.
For reservations or further information, e-mail cristol@bard.edu. For further information about the program, visit www.bard.edu/bgia.
# # #
(9/3/04)